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A Canadian passenger plane landed safely after it was hit by a drone in the first case of its kind in the country, a cabinet minister said Sunday.
With increasing numbers of unmanned aerial devices in the skies, collisions are still rare, but authorities around the world are looking at ways to keep jetliners out of harm's way.
The Canadian incident happened last Thursday when a drone collided with a domestic Skyjet plane approaching Jean-Lesage International Airport in Quebec City, Transport Minister Marc Garneau said in a statement.
"This is the first time a drone has hit a commercial aircraft in Canada and I am extremely relieved that the aircraft only sustained minor damage and was able to land safely," said the minister, a former astronaut.
The aircraft, carrying six passengers and two crew, was struck on its right wing at an altitude of about 450 meters (about 500 yards) and roughly three kilometers (two miles) from the airport, according to Le Journal de Quebec newspaper.
Well, don't keep us in suspense! Who won, the locomotive or the bumblebee?
(Score: 5, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Monday October 16 2017, @10:39PM (4 children)
Try a thought experiment: get in your car and drive as fast as you legally can in your area, then put a hovering target somewhere down the road - how small would it have to be for you to not see it in time for evasive action? Pretty easy? Now try having your vision blocked by a vehicle in front of you, how many seconds following distance do you need in order to avoid a pothole in the road? Remember: at highway speeds.
O.K. - now, push that speed up to ~200mph, and increase the area you're going to have to visually scan by a factor of 10 or more - remember: flying is a 3D exercise. How many seconds do you need to pick up a relatively small, nearly stationary target against the background? 5, maybe 10? 10 seconds at 200mph is about 3000 feet, over 1/2 mile. Tell me you can spot a hovering drone at 1/2 mile, especially if it happens to more or less blend into the background. Maybe you can spot it at 1/4 mile - do you think you can assess the decision of whether evasive action is beneficial or not, and effectively take that action, within 5 seconds?
Remember, you're on landing approach with a whole checklist of things to take care of like gear down, tower clearance, chatting with the passengers, etc.
To me, it's very surprising that the drone was hovering on the glide path to the runway, not surprising at all that it got hit while hovering there.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday October 16 2017, @11:15PM
Now consider a smaller airport with a heavy amount of flight-school (inexperienced) pilots and, otherwise, planes with only one propeller-driven engine. There comes a point in flight school where newbies have their first solo flights or would have to have their first landing in fog or other poor-visibility environments.
Economics is a huge factor with aviation and to a disturbing degree, in terms of fuel cost and packing as many landings at busy airports in as short a timespan as possible. I've seen ATC fuck up and bring in 2 back to back landings in such a short timespan that the second aircraft had to abort their landing and loop around until it was safe to land.
Though it is cool seeing the occasional pusher [imgur.com] at the smaller airports.
Not really an airport freak, but with the gazillion airports around here (I dunno, 7-ish civilian airports + Lindbergh International airport and that's not including all the military airports) it's impossible not to see planes in the sky at any given moment. Lindbergh is particularly dangerous, as airline pilots have to fly over a hill and then drop altitude like a motherfucker all the way down to sea-level. We had a controversy years ago in which some greedy land developers tried to squeeze and extra few stories into a condo complex sitting at the top of the hill (and potentially in the flight path of incoming airliners).
If you fly into San Diego a lot then you've had at least a few rough-landings as a result.
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Tuesday October 17 2017, @01:33AM
In my experience many people are unable to see motorcycles or sometimes, even other cars. I predict a 100% drone smash-rate in your thought experiment.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 17 2017, @02:26PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday October 17 2017, @04:34PM
Yeah, what he said... a car has rubber on the road, airplanes are (typically) bigger, heavier, and pushing against air to change their direction.
I've been in a 2 seater private plane when the pilot took evasive action from another private plane that was coming at us with ~200mph relative speed, you're going to want more than 5 seconds for that kind of action to take effect - even with small and light aircraft. It's sort of like pushing asteroids away from impact with Earth - a little push a long time before collision is much preferable to a last minute dodge attempt.
🌻🌻 [google.com]